A beaming Tom Ingram was thrilled with his performance in his first ever British Touring Car Championship, as he dragged his Toyota Avensis to sixth on the grid.
The achievement was made all the more remarkable by the fact that the Speedworks driver was outqualified only by five previous champions, his time less than two-tenths-of-a-second behind Andrew Jordan’s pole lap.
Ingram shared his incredulity after the session, where he had by far exceeded his and his team’s expectations.
“Not really!” exclaimed Ingram, when asked if he had any idea that he could achieve such a result. “Truth be told, we had our expectations of where we wanted to be and I said realistically if we can be [in the] top ten I’m going to be over the moon.
“To be sixth, with only five previous champions ahead of me – I couldn’t really ask for much more so I’m absolutely over the moon.”
The current Ginetta GT Supercup champion was full of praise for his team, with changes made on the day helping to secure his grid slot.
“There’s been a lot of changes that have gone into the car but the team have worked fantastically well.
“I came back from free practice one and [we] needed to make a few changes to the car which we did, and the car was there from the changes we made so full credit to the boys – we flashed the ideas around and all of a sudden they worked and it’s worked out for us even though I did have a little bit of a scary moment at the end.
Ingram also admitted that while he was thrilled with his performance, it would be a strange moment to start his first race in and amongst former series champions.
“I’m going to pull up in my grid slot and see Matt Neal ahead of me and Alain Menu behind me which is something I thought I’d never do,” said the 20-year-old. “Considering it was only probably eight, nine, ten years ago that I was stood around trying to get their autographs, it’s going to feel very surreal.
“I’ve said the first day at school is going to be tomorrow – qualifying is one thing and racing is a completely different kettle of frogs altogether so we’ll see.”